Sheriff charges Cherokee boy who allegedly ran away

By David Ibata

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A 12-year-old Cherokee County boy who allegedly ran away Wednesday night is now in more trouble than ever. Authorities have filed juvenile charges against him, Channel 2 Action News reported.

The youngster was last seen about 8:30 p.m. at a strip shopping center on Bells Ferry Road, across the street from Liberty Elementary School in Canton, according to the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office.

When the boy did not return home, a missing child call went out, and searchers from the sheriff’s office and Cherokee County Fire and Emergency Services converged on the area to look for him.

“You cannot take these kinds of incidents serious enough,” sheriff's spokesman Lt. Jay Baker told Channel 2. “It was right at that four-hour threshold where we were about to turn (the search) into an abducted child (case). We were certainly glad that we were able to locate him before that happened."

In a follow-up interview with the AJC, Baker said, “We had many resources  out there for a number of hours looking for him.” At least 15 sheriff’s deputies and a number of fire personnel were involved.

Searchers finally located the boy along a stream off Downing Creek Trail, near where he was last seen.

“It would appear he was trying to avoid the searchers and law enforcement,” the sheriff’s spokesman said. “When we learned he had run away, we felt it was proper to charge him.”

The youngster, who is not being identified because he is a minor, is charged with being an unruly juvenile and a runaway. He has been released to his biological father.

“We respond to missing kids and runaways on a regular basis. If they’re runaways – they’re not legitimately missing, and parents are having issues with them – absolutely, we’ll charge them,” Baker said.

Being brought into Cherokee’s juvenile justice system is intended to be for a child’s own good.

“He’ll have to show up in court and speak to a juvenile court judge, and then prosecutors will review his background and try to intervene and straighten the kid out before he has problems as an adult,” Baker said. “It’s not so much punitive as trying to help a child at young age and set him on a right course before he becomes an adult and starts having real problems.”